Attention! Calling all adults!
We would all really like to know what school was like for our parents. Was it similar to our experiences today? Did you have interactive whiteboards? How was it the same? How was it different? Do you have any funny tales to tell? PLEASE leave us a comment to tell us.
After a 3 mile walk ( I kept the penny it cost to go on the bus for sweets!) we entered a class of at least 40 in silence (or else!) sit behind our desk, a strict recital of times tables, followed by alphabet practice, writing practice a class chorus of the ten commandments and then maths and english lessons. The teacher used a black board with chalk and a blackboard duster which could also be used to throw at a chatty child! We used a wooden handle pen with a removable steel nib and ink filled up in our ink well. We had an open fire in the classroom, usually the teacher used this to heat themselves up, blocking us from the heat, in the winter we had our coats on! PE lessons were humiliating - at 13 the girls had to wear knickers and a t-shirt only and had to climb the hobby horse (I could never get my leg over it!).
ReplyDeleteWe had lots of fun though and plenty of freedom - many a time we were sent off on our own in the country to enjoy games at the age of 10. The curriculum was very relaxed, would alter with current events and we were trained to use sickles and other garden implements including sharp knives from the beginning of school. Health and Safety Regulations? What were they?
One thing that I remember from school is something called 'Circular Timetable' which was a device that you spun when you had finished all your work, and could choose a mystery activity. It was great.
ReplyDeleteMr Harrison
Headteacher
Miriam Lord, Bradford.
Hello Maple - Mitch's Granny & Grandpa's school days sound interesting - oh, to have that freedom nowadays!
ReplyDeleteI went to primary school in a village called Pilling in Lancashire (this is the school! http://www.stwilliams.ik.org/home.ikml) I loved going there. The school was very small - I think less than 100 pupils. That meant we had mixed-age classes - I think there might have been Y6/5/4 in the same class. We didn't have interactive whiteboards - it was still chalk and a blackboard. We had our own desks which you could open up (and hide things in!). I think the school got its first computer when I was in year six, but none of the staff really knew how to use it so it just sat unused in the library.
We had quite a lot of freedom in school - I remember when our headteacher used to teach us sometimes, he'd let us make planes out of balsa wood and then fly them on the field. I also seem to remember that he used to sit in his office smoking his pipe a lot - not sure if that's allowed now!
I had a fantastic time in primary school - my teachers were brilliant and, because the school was so small, the whole place felt very friendly.
Mr K :-)
I remember that only the chilren who wrote really clear and tidy were allowed to progress to the fountain pen which the teacher would have to fill when it was running out and the 1 sheet of blotting paper you were given that lasted all year. I remember that No Running meant no running. Having to stand up whenever a teacher came into the room and saying in unision "Good Morning/Afternoon"
ReplyDeleteSharon Jones
When I was at primary school I went to a Convent - which was a school that lessons were mostly taught by nuns. They were very strict but most were lovely. A nun taught me to play guitar when I was eight years old and I have been playing ever since! We had to wear different uniform for the summer and the winter. We had felt hats in the winter and straw boaters in the summer. We also had blackboards and chalk and had desks with room for inkpots. I dread to think what my uniform looked like at the end of the week! I took elocution lessons too and I still remember having to recite "The Cherry Tree".
ReplyDeleteI had to get on a bus from the age of 5 and got dropped off in town and then walked up a big hill (well, it was in Wales) in order to get to school. It was great fun and I made lots of friends, some of whom I still keep in touch with today even though I live a long way away.
I also used to help the dinner ladies at lunch with the washing up.
I remember my primary school days with fondness.
I went to Newport Girls Highschool. It was very strict. We were rarely badly behaved because we were all so scared of being sent to Miss Bagnall - the head mistress. There were four notoriously naughty girls in the school and they were punished by putting them in an isolation class. A class all of their own where they could not mix with the other school girls. They remained in that class for a whole school year. I always remember walking past the window to their class and seeing them looking so miserable. It certainly deterred the rest of us from misbehaving.
ReplyDeleteThe uniform was vile! We weren't allowed to wear skirts until 4th year (now called year
10). We had to wear shapeless ugly tunics ... Like pinafores only worse. The summer dress was made in our needle class lessons, so you can imagine what some of them turned out like !!
It was very strict but I do have very happy memories.
Jack has asked me to reminisce about my school days, which I remember fondly. As I have often said to Jack and his sister, school is the best time of your life (although I think he disagrees with that!)
ReplyDeleteI’m showing my age now, but like Mr Kenyon, I went to a small village Cof E Primary school, with about 60 pupils , so a lot of school time was spent in church . PE consisted of stilts, pogo sticks and skipping ropes, we had the old style wooden single desks with lift up lids, and I remember being so excited about becoming Ink Monitor (my job was to fill the ink wells for the fountain pens).Because the school was so small there was only 3 teachers, lunch was eaten at our desks (no hall), and there were no computers, calculators or interactive white boards (blackboard and chalk in those days).We were well behaved because we would be threatened with the cane (across the hand ) if we were naughty! But they were happy, happy days, and I learned a great deal in that little school!!
When I was 11, I went to secondary school in the city ( Chester), which was completely the opposite- it was h-u-g-e, but again I learned a lot , although if I’m honest, I was a bit disruptive at times (hope Jack doesn’t follow in my footsteps there!) .I can remember learning separate sciences, which I hated, and art, English and history which were my favourites. Back then there were no GSCE exams, instead we sat CSE and O level exams. I can still remember like it was yesterday, and I can remember our history teacher used to smoke during the lesson, and our chemistry teacher (“Flossie Fletcher”) used to grab naughty children by the ears with test tube holders. My funniest memory is forgetting to get my bread and butter pudding out of the oven in cookery, and the teacher saying it looked like “rabbit droppings on toast”……happy days :-)
Jack B’s Mum
I enjoyed secondary school and have fond memories as I liked to learn. The teachers made it fun, but we had no interactive whiteboards, just chalkboards and chalk and flip-up desks. It was a school that was strict on discipline, so if you misbehaved, you had a ruler slapped on your hand, or/and sent to the headmaster. There were people in my class who were not interested in learning, and misbehaved and had a very red hand at the end of the day! Running in the corridors was a big no-no. Its not until you leave school you realise how important school is!
ReplyDeleteLisa Nutting(Jack N's mum!)
I loved Primary school, so much that it made me want to become a teacher myself! (At home I had a play house and in the Summer I would set it up as a classroom and my friends would come round and be my pupils) I went to a Primary School in Telford called St Georges. We were the largest primary school. I remember playing netball at dinner time with the dinner ladies. We didn't have any computers and had only just got a whiteboard! I left primary school in 1990. (You can work my age out now.) I remember someone brought in some baby chicks one day and we had them running around our tables whilst we tried to draw them. We also had a class pet rabbit.
ReplyDeleteI was just speaking to my granny on the phone, and she said:
ReplyDeleteShe passed a scholarship called 11 plus to go through to high school. There were only 140 pupils there. It was very disciplined and all children knew right from wrong. They did as they were told, and they had respect for the teachers. Despite this, she enjoyed school life.
I went to Coton Mount Infants School the school which Greenfields Primary replaced. It was also known as the tin school as it was made out of courragated iron! It was a small school with only two classrooms with two teachers and a tiny office about the size of a cupboard! I remember a play corner, a reading corner, an art corner and a few tables. When we had school fairs there was a candy floss maker in the shed which made delicious pink candy floss. It had a very small field compared to Greenfields but we were still able to have sports day's and I remember getting a red certificate for coming 1st in the running race. There was no room to eat school dinners on site so we used to walk down to St. Catherine's Hall (now the Quaker hall) to have our lunch. There was no choice like you have today. There was one main meal and one pudding often sponge with pink panther custard. There was a great community spirit at Coton Mount and the parents actually built an extension to the school called the Cedar room which was where we went for our assemblies. My Mum (Sasha's Nani) also went to Coton Mount and reminded me that on the school field was a hill of grass which disguised an air raid shelter below. While my Mum was there they often had to be evacuated into the shelter.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 11 I passed my 11+ and went to Wakeman school which I loved. I feel quite sad that by July 2013 two of the schools I went to will no longer exist.
I went to a Church of England school in Pontesbury which is near Shrewsbury when I was young.It consisted of several different classes starting with what they called the babies class for children aged 4-5 years,then it was infants these two classes were only split by a partion not in proper classrooms.From infants you then went into standard one and standard two right up to standard seven and sometimes ex 7 if you were lucky. This took you up to age 14 where you then left school to get a job. We didn't wear a uniform in those days but we always hadf to dress in what was called our Sunday best on high days and holidays or if the vicar was coming into school.Our lessons consisted of arithmatic and scripture (which is where we learnt all about the bible.)and when we got a little older we did literature as well.We didn't have PE as such it was called drill this was done about four times a week on the playground where you had to stand in lines and do exercises copying the teacher.Again when we got a little older girls played netball and boys played football.Our school day was vitually the same hours as yours is now but there was no school dinners everybody had to take sandwiches. Girls and boys had lessons together but they didn't play together at playtime they had their own playgrounds.If we were ever naughty we had to stand at the front of the classroom facing the blackboard which was on an easel and the headmaster had a cane kept behind the blackboard which he would strike across the palms of our hands.I never had it as I was always good but my husband Gordon actually broke the headmasters cane in half to stop him hitting his best friend and got himself in a lot of trouble.Apart from all this I really enjoyed my school days and we hope you all do to.
ReplyDeleteMr and Mrs Perks (Mrs Coupland's Nan and Grandad.)